We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening, especially as we met up with friends and had some much needed book chat, as well!
Brian Bilston is a fairly recent discovery and we think his poetry is excellent - funny and thought provoking by turn.
We hadn't come across Henry Normal before, although we now realise he is the more famous of the two poets. We didn't really enjoy his poetry overly, maybe he is just a bit too down The Royle Family end of the poetry scale! We learned that he actually wrote the first series of this sit com. We were impressed, however, that he founded the Manchester Poetry Festival as well as Baby Cow Productions, which produced, amongst other programmes, Gavin and Stacey. For this alone, we would forgive him a lot!
Brian Bilston was spectacular. The hour dedicated to his poetry simply flew by. He read many of his recent poems as well as many amusing anecdotes from his life and poetry writing.
It's difficult to pick just one poem from the many he read, but I did particularly enjoy The Question:
